I ran 12psi with my stock cooler for ages without an issue. A front mount isn't necessary but you do notice the lack of response in warmer tempretures.
for boost gauges and gauges in general I'd be sticking with the Jap brand gauges (Blitz, Apexi, HKS, GReddy etc...) reason being is the quality. I believe meggala had a speco meter boost gauge which was telling him that he was running less than 1 bar unfortunately the gauge was wrong and he was running about 1.4bar and it blew his turbo. I think that's what happened if memory serves me correctly.